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How Biden’s new Executive Order affects Nigeria
BY NICHOLAS ABE
With one of the 17 Executive Orders he signed immediately he took his seat in the Oval Office, shortly after he was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States of America, Wednesday, January 20 2021, Joe Biden restored hope and smiles in many Nigerians.
Biden’s immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, aggressively trumpeting his ‘America First’ slogan, had almost effectively shut the doors against thousands of Nigerians who had looked towards the United States for the elusive green pastures, with an anti-immigration order.
The Trump’s Executive Order classified Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, along with Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Tanzania under the ‘Predominantly Muslim and African Countries’ whose citizens were prevented from immigrating to the United States through the diversity visa lottery, which grants green cards to as many as 50,000 people a year.
In enforcing the proclamation which took effect February 22, 2020, the Trump administration had argued that the ban, enacted in 2017, to restrict travel from Muslim-majority countries, was necessary to ensure that countries satisfy security requirements for travel into the United States, or face restrictions until they do.
It said Nigeria did not comply with the established identity-management and information-sharing criteria assessed by the performance metrics.
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The US also said Nigeria did not adequately share public-safety and terrorism-related information necessary for the protection of the national security and public safety of the US.
Biden’s new Executive Order on immigration comes as a great relief for many Nigerians as it has ended the so-called Muslim ban, which had made it difficult for them to immigrate to the United States.
With Biden’s new order, the State Department has consequently been directed to restart visa processing for Nigeria and the other affected countries and to develop ways to address the harm caused those who were prevented from going into the United States because of the ban.
Biden has also halted construction of Trump’s border wall with Mexico. The order includes an “immediate termination” of the national emergency declaration that allowed the Trump administration to redirect billions of dollars to the wall. It says the administration will begin “a close review” of the legality of the effort to divert federal money to fund the wall.